


The Long Nights of Midwinter

by sneakertime



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, No Spoilers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3062111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneakertime/pseuds/sneakertime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snowstorm leaves Skyhold cut off from the rest of the world, and Dorian loathes every last freezing moment of it. Nearly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Nights of Midwinter

‘Maker curse these forsaken bloody mountains and this freezing bloody castle,’ Dorian cursed with feeling as he tugged the thick woollen blanket tighter around his shoulders. He tried to turn his attention back to his book, but he simply couldn’t concentrate. His fingers felt like blocks of ice where they were gripping the pages. 

‘Feeling the cold are we Sparkler?’ Varric asked, suddenly looming (as much as a dwarf ever could anyway) out from behind a bookcase. His trademark self-assured smirk was still firmly in place on his ridiculous face, and Dorian was appalled to see that, despite the freezing temperatures, he still had half his shirt open.

‘Yes, well I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s a bit nippy out there,’ Dorian groused, gesturing out the window at the snowstorm that had been buffeting the walls of Skyhold for three days now. Around the keep the wind howled and shrieked like a wyvern with its arse on fire. Dorian shivered and pulled the blanket tighter still.

‘You know there’s a large fire downstairs in the main hall,’ Varric said. ‘You could always bring your books down there instead of shivering away up in this tower of yours.’ On cue a sudden freezing draft swept down the staircase from the Rookery, briefly making the library even colder than it already was.

‘What, and rub shoulders with the great unwashed?’ Dorian scoffed. ‘I don’t think so. How would I get any reading done with all that inane gossip and babble going on around me?’

‘Well well, aren’t we cranky?’ Varric said with a chuckle, folding his arms and raising one annoyingly knowing eyebrow at Dorian.

‘I’m in serious danger of freezing to death at the mercy of one of your barbaric Southern winters. I think I’m entitled to be _cranky_.’

‘You sure that’s it?’ asked Varric. ‘Nothing to do with his Inquisitorialness not being here?’

Dorian made a face, and then hid it by holding up the dusty old Orlesian tome he was reading in front of his head. ‘No,’ he lied, and badly.

‘Sure, sure,’ Varric laughed. ‘Well, if you change your mind that fire downstairs will be waiting for you. I’ll even save you a chair.’

‘Well I do feel blessed thank you,’ Dorian muttered sarcastically as Varric wandered off. He gave studying the book one last go, but had to concede defeat after five minutes of reading and re-reading the same three paragraphs and failing to absorb any of their contents.

As far as Dorian was concerned the South was always too cold, but this recent chilly snap had been particularly vicious. The Frostback Mountains were making a valiant effort to live up to their name, and for the last three days a snowstorm had raged outside, effectively isolating Skyhold from the rest of the world.

And _yes_ , as annoying as it was to realise other people had noticed, Dorian did miss the currently absent Lord Trevelyan with a frustratingly constant pang of heartache. Trevelyan had left Skyhold a fortnight ago to travel to Val Royeaux, a guest of the Empress Celene herself. His attendance had been somewhat reluctant, but Josephine had insisted he go in person. There were valuable alliances to be made, and these days the Inquisition wielded significant influence across Thedas. And you didn’t fob off Empresses with anything less than the Herald of Andraste himself.

Dorian was hardly a fawning young teenager in the first flush of love – he could, and indeed had, endured separations from his lover before with only a very little in the way of gloomy moping about the place. But the omnipresent cold was wearing on Dorian, and particularly at night, he found himself cursing the damned Empress and all her ridiculous court for conspiring to briefly rob him of the one bit of respite he might have enjoyed.

He sat in the library armchair brooding on these thoughts for a while - until another gust of icy air wafted through the library from upstairs, at which point Dorian swore vehemently, gathered up his book and blanket, and went downstairs to join Varric in front of the fire. 

…

‘Don’t know what _you’re_ complaining about,’ Sera said, leaning halfway over the tavern table to talk to him, waving her cards around expressively. In concession to the cold she was wearing a thick woollen jerkin over her tunic - but because she was still Sera, it had mustard stains on it.  

‘The cold? The freezing, all-encompassing, frigid misery?’ Dorian reminded her. The tavern at least was reasonably warm that evening, as much from the sheer number of people crowded inside as from the roaring fire in the hearth. Dorian, Sera and the Iron Bull were seated at a little table as close to the fire as possible. They were trying to play Wicked Grace, but at some point the conversation had taken an unwelcome turn to Dorian’s gloomy mood.

‘Yeah, but at least you’ve got that fancy room with that great big fire in it,’ Sera said. ‘That’s more than the rest of us have got.’

‘Alright,’ said Dorian. ‘Firstly, that is not true, plenty of people have fires in their rooms. Secondly, it isn’t _my_ room anyway, and so I’m not sleeping in it.’

‘Well it’s his Worshipfulness’s room isn’t it? And you’re boffing him aren’t you? Sera pointed out. She took a swig out of her ale tankard, and inevitably a small bit of it escaped and dripped onto her jerkin.

‘ _Boffing_?’ said Dorian, horrified.

‘Yeah, you know,’ Sera continued with a gleeful smirk. ‘Boffing, shagging, knocking-boots, enjoying a good roll in the hay…’

‘Dear Maker, stop talking,’ Dorian interrupted her quickly.  

‘Making the beast with two backs!’ Iron Bull broke in with a rumbling laugh, slapping Dorian across the shoulders hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

‘Yes, thank you, I think we’ve covered enough colourful euphemisms don’t you?’ Dorian complained. Not for the first time he wondered how it was that _this_ was what passed for society in his life these days, when only a few short years ago he had been attending parties at the highest echelons of the Tevinter elite. There had been fine music, exquisite food, endless backstabbing, casual murder and the occasional blood magic ritual after the canapés.

Put like that, Dorian reflected that perhaps he had not traded downwards after all.

‘Why _aren’t_ you sleeping in the big comfy bed then?’ Sera asked, apparently unwilling to let the subject go.

‘Feels a bit empty does it?’ Iron Bull said, with alarming insight. ‘Ah, must be nice to have someone to hold onto during the cold nights. A nice hot, supple body to cling onto, climb all over, roll around a bit with… tell me Dorian, on a night like this does Trevelyan warm you through thoroughly?’

‘Right, that’s it, I’m leaving,’ Dorian said, standing up from the table and turning his back on the both of them. As he walked away he tried to pretend he couldn’t hear them sniggering behind him.

…

It seemed Dorian was not the only one to find the library unbearably cold now that the weather had taken a turn for the horrendous, because it was completely empty when he went up there to retrieve a book on ancient Tevinter research into the Veil. Even the Tranquil, normally oblivious to such matters as mild personal discomfort, had sought a warmer refuge.

Because there was nobody about to see, Dorian furtively cast a small fire spell in the palm of his hand – nothing ostentatious, just enough to provide a little warmth. He’d find his book and be long gone before there was any danger of him accidently setting the library on fire.

‘It reminds them of the long walk…’ a distressed voice suddenly hissed in his ear as he was running his finger along the book spines, looking for the title he wanted. Dorian jumped violently and very nearly ignited the whole shelf.

It was only Cole, standing there in his ridiculous hat that was an affront to good taste everywhere. He was staring at Dorian in that unsettling way he had, like he was reading all your deepest secrets straight off of your soul. Which, Dorian was very uncomfortably aware, was probably _exactly_ what he was doing.

‘The wind – it bites like a thousand angry teeth,’ Cole continued insistently. ‘The snow is so thick on the ground, they can hardly walk, but they do anyway. They have no other choice. They cannot turn back. Their hearts are heavy, full of sorrow, they’ve lost so much, their one bright light has fallen and now the world seems so hopeless…’

He was talking about the flight from Haven, Dorian realised. He was about to open his mouth and ask Cole to kindly shut up and go bother somebody else, when the young man suddenly turned and began to walk away of his own accord. Dorian huffed irritably and rolled his eyes, and was about to turn back to the bookshelf when Cole abruptly stopped and looked back over his shoulder at him.

‘You miss him,’ he whispered, eyes wide. ‘You reach out at night and he’s not there, just empty space, nothing but coldness where there ought to be warmth. You’ve grown used to the warmth. You need it now.’

And with that he vanished away down the stairs, leaving Dorian gaping like a fish out of water behind him.

‘Has anyone ever told you what a charming conversationalist you are?’ he called out after him when he finally managed to find his voice again, although much too late for there to be any chance of Cole actually hearing.

…

The storm had been going almost a full week now, with no signs of abating. People were becoming anxious. Cullen had ordered a ration on the food – nothing too serious, Skyhold was, after all, equipped to withstand a siege. Still, there was a certain tension in the air that hadn’t been there before.

‘They wish the Inquisitor was here with them,’ Josephine remarked as she took a cup of hot spiced tea with Dorian that morning. ‘His presence would put their minds at rest, rally their spirits. A pity he is stuck on the other side of this terrible gale.’

It was a sentiment Dorian sympathised with wholeheartedly. He sequestered himself away in his cramped bedroom for the day, feeling uncharacteristically averse to company. He read – not the academic texts of the library, but a piece of ridiculous fiction lent to him by Varric. It was objectively terrible, but it kept Dorian occupied. Well, that and the small bottle of brandy he’d purchased from one of the merchants.

He went to bed early – another uncharacteristic move, but he didn’t feel up to venturing out in search of something more interesting to do. He fell asleep listening to the sound of the wind howling along the battlements.

He woke some hours later, pulled from sleep by the powerful sensation that something was amiss. It took him a moment to realise what it was. The door to his room was open, and there was somebody inside, moving around in the darkness.

Quick as a flash Dorian reached out and closed his hand around the grip of his stave, which was leaning against the wall next to the bed. With a single flick of his wrist the candles in the room sprang to life and he steeled himself, ready to blast the intruder with a searing fireball should the need arise.

Instead, when he saw who it was, he simply fumbled and nearly dropped his staff in a fit of awkward clumsiness that he would never admit to later under any circumstances.

‘ _Here_ you are,’ Trevelyan said. He was wearing his armour, and there was a considerable layer of snow clinging to the leather of the heavy coat. He was looking down at Dorian with an expression of faintly exasperated fondness. ‘What are you doing here? It’s freezing.’

‘This is my room isn’t it?’ Dorian protested when he finally managed to speak. ‘Where else would I be?’

‘In our bed?’ Trevelyan said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘I’ve looked all over for you.’

‘What are you doing here at all?’ Dorian asked, bewildered. The storm outside had not lifted, Dorian could still hear the wind buffeting against the castle walls.

‘We waited for two days to see if the storm would clear, and it didn’t. So we decided just to push on through.’ Trevelyan ran a hand through his hair to dislodge the snow that had settled there.

‘You decided to _push on through_?’ Dorian burst out, appalled. ‘Through a bloody snowstorm? You could have frozen to death out there you imbecile!’   

‘It was fine,’ Trevelyan said dismissively, even as visions of him being buried in a freak avalanche played out in Dorian’s imagination. He then immediately proved himself to be a liar by suddenly shivering violently.

At once Dorian was on his feet. He touched the back of his hand to Trevelyan’s cheek – it was like a block of ice.

‘You fool,’ he muttered, pretending to be annoyed even as he felt the horrible tight feeling he’d been carrying around in his chest for ages finally and suddenly unwind. His hands slipped under Trevelyan’s coat to the straps that held his armour in place. ‘Come on, help me get this off you before you get frostbite.’

Between the two of them they wrangled Trevelyan’s armour off of him in short order. The rest of the man was as ice cold as his cheek had been. Eventually he was in nothing but his underclothes, and Dorian wasted no time in dragging him into the bed. Really it was too small for two, and they had to lay half on top of each other, covered in a thick layer of blankets. Trevelyan was freezing, and Dorian wrapped his arms around him and tangled their legs together in a bid to warm him up faster.

‘How is it you don’t feel the cold?’ he grumbled, speaking mostly into the fine hair around Trevelyan’s ear. ‘Honestly, the Free Marches aren’t that much further south than Tevinter.’

‘Maybe it’s not that you’re from Tevinter,’ Trevelyan mumbled. ‘Maybe it’s just that you’re a delicate little flower.’

‘Hah,’ Dorian scoffed. He pinched Trevelyan on the shoulder as punishment, and then made up for it with a kiss over the same spot. ‘It strikes me that we’d have been rather better off trying to warm you up in that fancy bed of yours.’

‘We could have, if you’d been in it when I went there,’ Trevelyan pointed out. He was beginning to warm up a little, but his skin was still uncomfortably cool - especially his hands and feet. To his amazement, Dorian found that he didn’t care at all.  He wrapped his arms tighter around him, and pressed warm kisses to the cold mouth until the lips under his were no longer unnaturally chilled.

‘It’s a good thing you’re back,’ Dorian murmured quietly after they’d been dozing a while. ‘Your devoted followers were beginning to grow restless without their illustrious leader about the place. Although I’m afraid I still can’t say I approve of you traipsing across a dangerous mountainside in the middle of a damned blizzard.’

‘Well,’ said Trevelyan, mumbling tiredly. He sounded like he might fall asleep at any moment. ‘I didn’t do it to see them.’

He drifted off almost the moment he said it, breathing going shallow and eyes flickering shut. That left only Dorian awake, staring at the ceiling, arms full of sleeping Lord Inquisitor and suddenly feeling, for the first time in what felt like forever, really, properly warmed through. Not long after he fell asleep himself.


End file.
